We’re off the see the wizards, the wonderful wizards of O…

“We are LIVE in 30 seconds around the world!” said the deep manly voice on the intercom, to our frenzied crowd of 8500 Oprah disciples. Immediately erupted the loudest cheers, screams and applause not heard since Elvis sang All shook up. Wooooohoooo! Talk about a Big O in Toronto last Monday April 16, 2012 and we were so lucky to be there and breathe the same air a few feet away from O and her divine who’s who of guest speakers. The OWN network had decided to answer the call of countless petitions and finally come to Canada for a live show of Oprah’s Lifeclass goes on tour. Ms. Winfrey often describes over the moon moments with “JOY RISING”! in her quintessential tone, but in this precise minute, O come meet your long awaited messiah was more appropriate to describe the joy steaming from the roof of the Toronto Convention Centre.

For so many around the world, this would be a pivotal bucket list event; so the least I can do is entertain you with what went on behind the scenes of this momentous day.

First of all, the early bird does get the worm. As soon as the Canadian stop on the Lifeclass tour was announced, I happened to be online ready to click tickets, order now, confirm in less than 1 minute to secure 2 Executive seating tickets, a few feet away from the stage to the left. I warned a few friends to do the same but a few hours later tickets were all gone. Organized in collaboration with the Power Within group in Toronto, this event was held in the giant room on the convention floor but with no assigned seat numbers, which meant you had to show up early and get ready to run in and beat the stampede to our coveted aisle seats. The line ups were so long and endless I had to remind my fellow attendees how blessed we all were to live in a free country since these line ups are common just to go vote or get water in parts of the world. The Oprah effect of seeing the glass half full was already taking shape.

Now many women there chose to invite their best girlfriends or mothers to the show. Looking across in the line-up I would say 85% were women age 30-70. I never hesitated one second to invite my husband of 20 years, whom is a proud self-declared M’Oprah (the Men who love Oprah). How exciting! We were going to fly into Toronto from Ottawa the day before the show, book 2 nights in a suite downtown, and celebrate my birthday with this once in a lifetime experience. Both my husband and I have read many books of guest speaker Tony Robbins since the days of Awaken the Giant within, Get the edge audio tapes, and attended some of his leadership seminars. Same for Deepak Chopra, read his books, did the Chopra Centre 21-day meditation challenge, bought the yoga DVDs… We had also carefully watched the last few Lifeclasses and Oprah shows and learned so much about the wonderful Bishop TD Jakes and Ms. Iyanla Vanzant. We had done all the homework online, assigned by Oprah herself. We came prepared. The speakers would all take the stage one at a time before the live taping of Lifeclass and share their wisdom, educate, enlighten, impregnate with possibilities…

Now those that were there will know what this was a running gag throughout the pre live show event… We were told we were all pregnant, with possibilities, both by Iyanla and the Bishop. To never give up as we are just about to give birth to our dreams, to buckle down and Puuuuush! Great concept we all understood. Nurture your dreams, plant the seed, let them grow, protect them until delivery… Then raise them and feed them right, until you can let them fly!